


You Want It Darker

by Regionalpancake



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Raffi is so very kind, Seven is so very broken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24039367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regionalpancake/pseuds/Regionalpancake
Summary: After suffering a flashback from her time connected to the collective on the Artifact, Seven relies on her photographic memory and Raffi to calm her down.
Relationships: Raffi Musiker/Seven of Nine
Comments: 43
Kudos: 80
Collections: Caught The Darkness (Star Trek Fandom Event - May 2020)





	You Want It Darker

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to beta-reader Lintila who looks under the smoking hood of the fic and whistles ominously.
> 
> (Cw: There are some descriptions of blood/injury (in a Borg/xB context) in this. As well as a mild description of a panic attack. Just a heads up in case you need one x)

_The silence was dripping with death._

_A choking blackness. Ice cold. Stars tumbling above, faster and faster. White points of light trailing, streaked with sickly green._

_Her implant riddled arms, thousands of them, reached out to grab something, anything, finding nothing. Bodies flew past her. She could feel her blood begin to boil and spit in the void. Pain licked across her skin, like flame, as thousands of capillaries began to strain and rupture._

_A sickening crawling churned her blood: millions of nanoprobes swarming to repair the damaged vessels, only for them to burst and tear again. Prolonging the pain. A lace network of veins faltering. A neural convergence of minds spluttering out._

_Lungs bulging, burning, breaking. Green lights streaming. Bodies everywhere._

_Screaming. She was screaming. We were screaming. Everything was screaming. So much death. A swarm of bodies. Life-signs blinking out, one after another, in staccato rhythm. Metal sinew snapping like a snare drum, tight and painful._

_Drone debris everywhere._

_Death everywhere._

_She couldn’t save them. She couldn’t do anything._

_She couldn’t. Couldn’t._

_No. NO._

“NO!” Seven shrieked, lurching upright.

“Hmm? Seven?” Raffi mumbled, rolling over, bleary eyed.

“We’re dying!” Seven’s voice was horse and felt too small, too unconnected, after the all consuming roar of the collective.

Raffi propped herself up, Seven’s urgent tone shaking her from her sleepy state. She drew Seven into her arms, making soothing circles on her back with her hand. She was careful to avoid her implants, she didn’t want to make this worse. “No one’s dying. You’re safe. It's ok.”

Under her hands Raffi noticed a few spots of drying blood, sticking Seven’s shirt to the recently disturbed ports in her back. She must have knocked the scabs off. _Oh, Seven…_

“I...” hot tears began to run down Seven’s face. The pain of it was overwhelming. The shame of crying didn’t help. “I couldn’t...” Her blonde hair clung to her face and neck with a cold sweat. Seven could feel her throat tightening. 

“Raffi, I couldn’t,” she rasped “I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t save any of them.”

Raffi’s heart ached seeing Seven like this. This was the second time this week she’d watched the nightmares take hold. Vicious and unyielding. 

It seemed wrong to see Seven so helpless. The xB’s usual calm, collected exterior always exuded a cold and seemingly unshakeable confidence, but here Seven looked so…small. She looked broken. Beaten.

“I reconnected them, just to. . . Just to, let them die.” Seven stammered in between choking tears.

“Seven you didn’t let anyone die, it’s not your fault. You were trying to help.” Raffi watched Seven squeeze her eyes closed, trying to block out the memory.

“I can’t.” Seven clutched at her throat “I can’t breathe.”

Photons flickered at the end of the bed, a warm English voice chirped “What is the nature of the psychiatric emerg...” 

“We’ve got this,” Raffi cut Emil off “Computer deactivate EMH.” 

She didn’t want a repeat of the last time. She winced at the memory of the EMH trying to administer a cocktail of sedatives and mood stabilisers by hypospray. Seven had screamed as the hypo pressed against her skin. She’d lurched instinctively away from the metal contact with her neck. Clawing at the spot; red marks blossoming under her scraping touch as she shook. Muttering “no, no, no,” under her breath.

No. No hypo this time. Raffi had worked with the EMH to replicate the same cocktail of drugs as a tablet.

“Just hang in there a second ok, babe?” Raffi said quietly, softly kissing her shoulder, a gentle hand on the other woman’s back.

Raffi slid out of bed and hurried to the bathroom. La Sirena automatically filled the cramped space with a fierce cold light that made her wince, she looked thin and tired in the mirror. 

“Fuck.” she squinted “Computer, lights to 10 percent.” 

Her dark reflection slid aside as she opened the cabinet above the sink. She grabbed a bottle, ‘Raffi’s home cookin’ scrawled on the side, and filled a glass from the tap.

Seven slumped shaking on the bed, shoulders sagging as if the weight of the quadrant were pushing down on them. Her breathing still sounded fast and shallow. Raffi eased back onto the bed. Thigh brushing gently against Seven’s side.

Metal fingertips clicked softy against the edge of the glass as Raffi passed it to her. Seven flinched at the sensation, transferred the glass to her other hand and swallowed the tablet. 

Raffi took the glass, Seven’s right hand nervously clenching and unclenching.

“Seven, honey, listen to me, try to breathe.” Her voice fell into a first officer’s cool and measured tone, the result of long standing habit during difficult situations.

“Just like last time. In through your nose and out through your mouth.”

“I can’t.” Seven’s gasped in-between sobs “Raffi, I can _hear_ them.”

“Seven, there’s no one else here now. You’re just gonna focus on my voice.” Her fingers interlacing with Seven’s. “Look around, list five things you can see. Here. Now.”

“They were dormant!” Seven continued as she lifted a shaking hand, wiping her limp hair out of her eyes with the back of her arm “If I hadn’t reconnected them… If I hadn’t _re-assimilated_ them…“

“Honey, you can’t do this to yourself.” Raffi held the side of Seven’s face, fingers spreading out into her tangled hair, she traced her thumb over the xB’s cheek as a tear ran along the edge of her implant.

“Name something you can see. Something here. Let’s do hair again, ok?”

Seven met her lover’s gaze. With an imperceptible hum her ocular implant focussed in the dark of the room, a pause “One hundred and twenty two thousand, three hundred and forty seven hairs” she murmured, breathing ragged, as she looked at the halo of curls that framed Raffi’s face.

“Good. Err, now do freckles.”

Seven’s eyes roamed cautiously across Raffi’s features, and then over the memory of her skin in her mind.

“Ninety one freckles.”

“That’s more than last time?” Raffi questioned, glad to see Seven’s breathing begin to steady.

“I’ve seen more of you since last time,” Seven smiled, weakly.

Raffi was glad of the darkness of her quarters. She blushed.

“OK, what’s my heart rate?”

“Your resting heart rate is sixty two beats per minute” Seven answered automatically.

“OK, but what’s my heart rate now?”

Seven pushed her fingers gently into Raffi’s wrist, paused, “Current heart rate ninety two beats per minute.”

Seven took in Raffi’s calm, reassuring facade, at odds with her seemingly anxious heart. Appreciated for the moment both the worry and the effort to conceal it. Felt it start to slow under the gentle pressure of her fingers. Felt her own heart rate follow suit.

“Good, doing good.” Raffi’s soft gaze steadily held her’s. “Something else, here, now,”

Seven could feel herself begin to thaw, tense lines of her face smoothing, reflected in Raffi’s eyes. 

“Brown eyes,” she whispered.

Seven tried to level her breathing; mind still distantly tumbling, trying to lock on to something real to name next. Her gaze dropped to their interwoven fingers.

“Soft hands.” She squeezed Raffi’s hands in her own, running her thumb over the familiar contours of the other woman’s skin.

“Raffi.” She shifted, kneeling between Raffi’s knees, weight on her heels, like a pilgrim before an altar.

“Raffi,” her breathing levelling, “The Borg…on the Artifact, I felt it. I felt them die. All of them.”

Raffi’s heart broke. _How much pain did the universe expect this woman to carry?_

“And the Romulan,” Seven added as if confessing another sin “she didn’t deserve to live but…”

Seven held her head in her hands “Just another fucking murder to my name.”

“Hey, come on, there’s a difference between murder and self defense..”

“It’s not like that,” Seven prickled. She felt angry at Raffi trying to give her an ‘out’, trying to give her a reason, she didn’t deserve one.

“On Voyager I strove to be an individual, make my own choices, live my own life.” Seven pinched the bridge of her nose. “Turns out when I get that; my choices just translate into a bodycount.”

“Honey, there are so many people who owe you their lives. On Fenris? On this ship.”

“I’m still…” she trailed off. _Responsible? Guilty? In the red?_

“You survived.” whispered Raffi. “That’s all anyone ever does out here. You did what you needed to.”

“But I . . . ”

“But nothing.” Raffi eased closer. “I don’t know what you need to hear, honey, but I know what I needed to hear when the world started to fall apart after everything.” 

She thought of those nights when Cris had carefully bundled up the broken pieces of her, kept them safe until she had the strength to place herself back together.

“That the people who love you will forgive you for whatever you can’t, or won’t, forgive yourself for. We’ll love you twice over if you can’t love yourself right now.”

A faint orange light at Seven’s collarbone flashed dully, distant, deep under her skin. 

“You were dealt the worst hand of all of us,” Raffi vaguely gestured to the ship around them “and that’s really saying something.”

The OPS officer continued. “You’re the only one who didn’t straight up choose to crash out of their own life. You didn’t hide like the rest of us cowards; in a ship, or a vineyard…or a bottle. You got hurt, Seven, you got hurt _so badly_ and the only thing you’ve ever tried to do since is help other people.”

They sat in silence as La Sirena passed serenely underneath the great, silver rings of a gas giant.

“I don’t deserve you.” Seven sighed.

Raffi’s hand tenderly cupped her lover’s face, fingers sinking into her damp hair.

“Bullshit.” She whispered, smiling.

Raffi paused before cautiously lessening the distance between them, not wanting to break this hard earned stillness. Eyes meeting tentatively with Seven’s.

Taking the gesture like a lifeline, Seven met Raffi’s lips with her own.

Seven tasted of salt. Sweat or tears, she wasn’t sure.

It didn’t matter.

All that existed was Seven’s arms around her and her mouth, hungry and insistent against her own.

Tonight she was Seven’s safe harbour, her port in the storm. Tomorrow they would face whatever came, stronger together.

**Author's Note:**

>  _“There's a lover in the story/ But the story's still the same / There's a lullaby for suffering / And a paradox to blame / But it's written in the scriptures / And it's not some idle claim / You want it darker / We kill the flame.”_  
> [You Want It Darker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD6fvzGIBfQ) 2016 by Leonard Cohen from the album of the same name.
> 
> The irony of me choosing the song “You Want It Darker” and then discovering I’ve quite possibly written the _least_ angsty contribution so far to this challenge - is not lost on me! :p 
> 
> Hopefully this scrapes through as angsty enough! I wrote it, thought it seemed dark enough by my standards and then read all the Voyager fandom’s contributions so far and... _holy moly_ they know how to angst over there. It’s dark in the Delta Quadrant I guess! :D
> 
> Thanks for reading <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] You Want It Darker, by Regionalpancake](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24140851) by [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig)




End file.
